


Thursday's Child

by gonergone



Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 09:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2767403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonergone/pseuds/gonergone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four things that annoy Arthur about Curt and one that doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thursday's Child

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thegirlwiththemouseyhair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirlwiththemouseyhair/gifts).



1\.   
Curt hated being alone. That was the most important thing, the thing that colored everything else in their relationship (if it could be called that) because it meant that Arthur had to deal with Curt all the time if he wanted to be with him. There was no getting around it. There was no _break_. The truth was, if he had known what he was getting into, he might have chickened out before it even began. 

*

At first, in the early tentative days, when Curt would meet him for a drink and they would scowl at the shitty bands (who were just kids, were they really that fucking _old_ ) and talk a little between sips of beer, it had been so easy. There was a rhythm between them, right from the start.

It had taken weeks to get Curt to meet him, and when he finally did, the first thing Curt said was, "I don't want to talk about Brian."

"Neither do I," Arthur replied honestly. 

Curt's eyes had narrowed, but he'd nodded once and turned away. 

It was hard to believe he was really there, not a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation. Arthur had spent years of his life obsessed with Curt, and having him actually there, so close Arthur could smell the smoke on his clothes and see his throat work around his beer was too much. He couldn't look at him straight on. Instead, he watched Curt from the corner of his eye as he waved down the bartender. Curt, parked on a stool, one foot tapping peevishly, the riot of motion that Arthur remembered so well. It was reassuring to know that not everything had changed.

He wasn't sure if Curt had ever wanted to meet again; the gem in his beer would have made a poetic enough exit. But Arthur wasn't interested in poetic exits. He was interested in Curt: remembering Curt as he had been, and learning this new, older, tougher Curt. If this Curt would let him.

Arthur hoped he would let him. 

*

It surprised him when Curt agreed to go back to his place. Arthur had asked reflexively, automatically, in the overly-casual way he'd been using since he was a teenager. He'd always expected them to say no, the unattainable men he lusted after – he had a type, molded after Brian Slade and Curt himself, and as much as he hated to admit it, those were not the type of men who tended to look twice at someone like him. If he hadn't had such a thick streak of masochism running through him, such a fixation on nostalgia, such irrefutable _Irishness_ , he probably would have found a nice _normal_ guy to settle down with years ago. Decades ago.

Like most things, it was his own fault. 

*

Curt made a beeline for his records as soon as they were in the door. They were hard to miss, sprayed across a good section of the living room floor, half of them without their sleeves, and Arthur cursed himself for that, for letting Curt see how careless and untidy he was with them. Arthur leaned against the wall, watching him flip through them and trying not to think about what would happen if he failed this test – because it _was_ a test, there was no mistaking that. He hadn't been judged on his record collection since he had been a kid, and the thought of being rejected because Curt thought he had shitty taste in music was actually more painful than Curt hating his looks or his personality. Music was what really mattered, even after all this time. 

Eventually Curt pulled out one record and set it on the turntable, turning the dial up. There was the scratch of the needle, then the first familiar chords. The Minutemen. Not what Arthur would have expected, although he was at a loss as to what he _did_ expect. His idea of Curt was someone still trapped in the 70s, forever and ever, and that just wasn't reality, and it wasn't fair. Not to either of them.

Curt shimmied over to him, stopping in front of him and raising an eyebrow. "Bed?"

Arthur grinned, tension falling away in a moment, and reached for his hand. 

*

Curt more or less moved in after their second date. Arthur hadn't realized what was happening until it had already happened; he left Curt sleeping in the morning and came home from work to discover Curt's guitars lain over his couch and a duffle bag of clothes strewn across the bedroom floor. He had been euphoric that Curt could want him so much he'd choose to be with him in such a concrete way. He hadn't known then, as he found out quickly, that Curt moved in because his last lover had left him a month ago, and the month had been spent alone, and he moved in with Arthur mostly to not be on his own anymore. That Curt, beneath everything, was as fragile as a dandelion; one puff could blow him away. 

 

2.  
Curt was a night owl. He'd wake Arthur up at four in the morning to have him listen to the latest melody he'd thought up, the acoustic guitar loud in the night stillness. Sometimes Arthur's asshole upstairs neighbor Ian would start pounding on the ceiling if the music went on long enough, and Arthur knew it was only a matter of time until the landlord got involved. It was still worth it, though, to be the very first person in the world to hear Curt's music and see Curt's face as he played it, the shyness and uncertainty that Curt covered up so well in public. To know that _Curt Wild_ was waiting for his opinion.

To have this small proof that he mattered to Curt, better than any words could ever tell.

Curt tapped his fingers impatiently on the guitar's neck. "It's not… there's something missing. The sound isn't _right_."

"It sounded good," Arthur said muzzily.

Curt shook his head, his fingers tapping faster. "It's fucked," he muttered.

Arthur reached for him, tugging on the front of Curt's t-shirt until he heard the dull thud of the guitar on the floor and a second later Curt's body was draped over him, cool in the stuffy bedroom. 

"It's good," Arthur repeated, more firmly. He wanted to kiss the confirmation into Curt's skin, to press it everywhere until Curt believed it. Instead, he pushed the t-shirt up until Curt got with the program and yanked it over his head. 

Arthur sat up, stretching to run his fingers down the length of Curt's chest. There are scars here and there along the pale flesh – some of them Arthur had already heard the stories for, but some of them Curt had been vague about. Arthur wasn't sure if Curt didn't remember how he got them, or just didn't want to tell him. 

There was the unmistakable sound of Curt's jeans being unbuttoned and then Curt was naked next to him, the blankets pushed out of the way and any thoughts Arthur had about falling back to sleep were gone completely. He knew he was going to regret it when he had to get up for work – he always did – but that was the last thing on his mind as he wrapped a hand around Curt's cock and stroked lightly, teasingly. He could never bring himself to rush sex with Curt, even if the world were falling in. He wondered if there would ever be a time when it became perfunctory, boring. He couldn't even imagine that, not for him, though he assumed it would for Curt eventually. The trick was to try to stave that off as long as possible.

*

It wouldn't matter much, except that Arthur needed to be at his desk at nine in the morning, and most days Curt made that nearly impossible. Curt, who had never held a regular job in his life, couldn't understand the mechanics involved, or why Arthur cared so much. It took threats of them both being out in the street before he let Arthur sleep more than a few hours at night, and even then Arthur was living on coffee and cigarettes. He spent a lot of time stumbling around, bleary eyed, thinking _I'm too old for this_ , but not seeing any real way around it. He wasn't going to give up Curt, and he wasn't going to give up his job, either.

That was the other thing Curt didn't understand, the more important thing: that Arthur loved his job. He _loved_ it, the bustle and stress and deadlines and crabby Lou and the whole demeaning, cutthroat business of it. He thought Curt would never understand loving something that wasn't music, because Arthur loved music too; he lived for music for a long, long time, after all. But never like Curt. Curt was too single-minded, and in a way, Arthur admired him for it. Didn't they all live like that, back then? That was when Arthur had watched people burn for music, watched them let it destroy them. Hell, he had almost been one of them, back when it meant something to die for it. It was why Arthur had never minded coming second to music for Curt. Not then, and not now.

He just wished, sometimes, that Curt would understand that it was possible to love more than one thing.

 

3\.   
Curt was a slob. There was really no way around it. It wasn't just clutter, either; Curt was happy to live with a level of grime that Arthur found beyond belief, and he'd lived in some exceptionally squalid places after he'd left home. 

Anytime Arthur had to go out of town to follow a story, even just overnight, he dreaded going back to the flat, and it was inevitable that their first fights – and their worst ones – all centered around Curt's inherent inability to pick up after himself like a fucking adult. 

Arthur supposed he should be grateful that something so trivial was what they fought about, but he lost sight of that whenever he was in the thrones of self-righteous anger at finding the milk jug overturned in the refrigerator or Curt's week-old Chinese leftovers attracting ants in his bedroom closet, of all places. 

Inevitably, the crescendo of the fight would revolve around Curt accusing Arthur of being _middle class_ , with all the baggage it connoted, and Arthur would face a wave of shame and helpless rage because he'd hated where he grew up, and how, and he'd run from it all as soon as he could, but it obviously didn't matter, that life would haunt him forever, no matter what kind of disguise he tried to wear and what kind of person he made himself into. 

For his own sanity Arthur thought about getting them separate apartments a hundred times, but Curt couldn't stand to be alone, and so there would never be a neat solution to it.

 

4\.   
Curt hated staying in. Arthur had never really considered himself a homebody, but Curt was on a whole different level. He was too full of energy for the flat to contain him. He needed to be out and about, and if Arthur wanted to be with him, then from whenever he got off work until the bars closed, he needed to be out and about, too, no matter how exhausted he was, or how much work he had to do.

There were a hundred bars around Chicago that Arthur had spread his notes on, writing his stories in drafts in longhand on a yellow legal pad with Curt drinking beside him, each of them in their own world with the night stretched thin around them. 

It was surprisingly peaceful.

Until Curt was recognized, anyway. It happened infrequently, which Arthur took as further confirmation of the decline of Western civilization, but it did happen.

All too often, it would be a drunk college student who knew one or two of Curt's more famous songs, who would want Curt's autograph or his picture, and sometimes they'd try to get him to go back to their place or into the dingy bathroom with them. Sex didn't matter – it had never been something Curt had been that enticed by, but Arthur hated it when they gave Curt drugs. 

"Curt Wild! Curt fucking Wild, man!" they would shout, grabbing Curt's arm clumsily, and in their faces Arthur could see himself, his younger self, set to worship at the feet of musical giants and forgetting that they were just people. It was more than a little humiliating, especially because he knew there was a part of himself that would never get over that starstruck wonder phase, and he wasn't exactly sure how much of that was why Curt was with him in the first place. Curt wasn't _Brian_ , he didn't need to have people salivating over him all the time, but he wasn't immune to it, either. Part of him hungered for the crowds chanting his name, the fans and groupies and whole rooms full of people yelling " _Curt fucking Wild, man!_ " Arthur knew that.

Arthur would sometimes catch himself staring off into space at work, thinking about what would happen if – when – Curt got his shit together enough to finally go on tour again, when he'd be gone for weeks and months at a time and Arthur would be stuck in the life he'd made for himself, waiting on phone calls that came less and less often until they eventually stopped altogether. And that would be that. 

Unless he had the courage to torpedo everything he'd worked for to go with him.

Not that Curt had asked him to. 

Not, he sometimes feared late at night, that Curt _would_ ask him to.

 

1.  
Those were the things that annoyed him, things that were always humming in the background of Arthur's consciousness, but the thing that he kept going back to, over and over, was Curt. _Curt_. 

Curt… was just Curt. Not _Curt Wild_ , not the musical genius that had had such a huge effect on Arthur's life. Curt, who was funny and tough and clever, and who, despite everything Arthur believed and expected, seemed to like Arthur, just for himself. It took him a long time to come around to it, but there were so many little moments that Arthur held onto:

When Arthur would come home with the dregs of whatever story he'd been chasing down still clinging to him, exhausted and spent, Curt would be there, his guitar on his lap and a cigarette clamped between his teeth as he worked on something, and Arthur would stop just inside the door and listen, and listen, and listen.

When they were out somewhere, Arthur writing and ignored at the bar while a small crowd gathered around Curt, eventually Curt's eyes would always meet Arthur's over their heads or in the mirror behind the bar and he'd smile, a private moment just between them. 

When they were in bed, or on the couch, or in the hallway against the wall or balanced on the kitchen table, it was Arthur's name Curt chanted, without fail, as he screamed toward orgasm; or after, when he pulled Arthur close, his fingers digging into his upper arms. 

Curt never gave a fuck about any of that machismo bullshit. He never needed to pretend he was tough, and he definitely never needed to care what anyone thought about him. When they were walking down the street or in a crowded club he'd reach unselfconsciously for Arthur's hand, and Arthur, who _did_ need to act tough and _did_ care what anyone thought of him, would hold it tight. 

And it was enough.


End file.
